The Glatstein Chronicles (30 page)

For my part, I told him how alone I felt, going home after eight, nine days of travel over sea and land—alone and abandoned. Along the way, I had engaged with all kinds of people, and now all had vanished, I would never see them again, not even in another twenty years. There would be no reunions. “That’s all well and good for traveling salesmen,” I said, “who live for the moment, grab hold of it without qualms, who don’t put down roots anywhere.” I told him that I had met a host of fine people en route and became absorbed in their revelations. Nothing had actually happened in all that time but for their talk, and their talk was more interesting than any adventure. It was interesting even when I didn’t really hear it, when life in the form of words buzzed around me, and afterward I could retreat into my own personal archive of afterthoughts. It’s the dialogue, not the action, that makes the play—the turn of phrase, voice, facial expression. It may be my fault for being so self-centered, but it often seemed as if the people I met were escorting me home, and now they have abandoned me and left me to complete the journey on my own.

My young Pole was silent for a moment, which gave me opportunity to recall at least some of the faces that had crossed my path. “Yes,” he said after some reflection, “everyone has his own measure of loneliness, but some lonely people manage to seem surrounded by a full jazz ensemble and others don’t. Wouldn’t it be strange, though”—here he threw me a smile—“if you showed up after twenty years, accompanied by the whole musical group you met on the way? Anyhow, each one of us must walk alone on his own via dolorosa.” His mother, he added, wouldn’t be able to hold out if he didn’t get to see her at least twice a year. He was her only surviving child of the six she had borne. Two died before he was born and three afterward. “Children are the biggest uncertainty of all in the small Polish towns. Until they’re ten or twelve, you can’t even count them as certain members of the family.”

“I also have three dead brothers,” I said. “Two died before I was born. The third, my little brother, was three or four when he died. I was there when he closed his eyes.” I turned my head to the window and began trudging—alone as my companion had rightly observed—down my personal via dolorosa, remembering Hertske, the little brother who had brought death into our house and how my father and a few other men had stood over his crib as his soul departed his body, my father crying out with all his might, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Hertske’s eyes were glazed, and my father escorted little Hertske’s departing soul with his wailing prayer until the crib fell still.

It was already late at night. We had all gone to bed, only my father had stayed up, standing watch over the crib. Hertske hadn’t left us yet. Each time I woke up, as if from a fever, I heard my father mumbling Psalms and sobbing quietly, so as not to awaken the household. In the early morning, I woke up to the sound of full-voiced lamentation. This was my mother, sitting over the covered crib, weeping profusely, as she did when reading aloud from her women’s Bible. The words were archaic, not of the kind used in everyday speech, but taken from the sacred literature, specially compiled for women. Her patient Jewish piety had snapped, she was complaining to God, hurling accusations. I wandered around the house in pain. Everything hurt, even breathing was painful. I held my breath for as long as I could, and when I couldn’t any longer, I let it out with a gasp. I begged my mother at least to let me kiss my little brother’s golden head, but she said, in a crushed voice, that this was against Jewish law. However, to please me, she removed the covers. “Look, my child,” she said to me, “see what’s become of his angelic little face.” I was overcome with grief. My mother kept hurling her accusations at God, her face turned up to the ceiling, demanding justice. “Can it be right,” she moaned, “that such a young, beautiful, heaven-sent gift of joy should be cut down and laid in the grave?”

There was no reply from the ceiling. I felt that Mother hadn’t sufficiently shaken the Throne of Glory and, remembering that two of my brothers had already died before I came into the world, I jumped to her assistance and reminded her that she had an even stronger reason to be angry with God. “Mother,” I said, “a Jew is commanded to tithe, to offer up a tenth of his wealth to God, but God has already taken a lot more from you than a tenth. Is that just?” I thought that this was an impressive formulation and was convinced that it couldn’t be ignored or dismissed with a gesture. Mother immediately grasped the validity of my charge and began to lament anew, “O Master of the Universe, a Jew is commanded to offer up a tenth of his wealth, and You have already taken a lot more than a tenth from me. Is that just?” I calmed down some, pleased with the fact that my mother, a grown-up, had seen fit to cite my point in her quarrel with God. I believed that we had bested Him and that Mother, Hertske, and I had won out. Our argument was incontrovertible. There could be no justification for the event that had occurred. God Himself must now be ashamed—a pity the damage had already been done. The waxen doll lying lifeless in its crib would never be live Hertske again. But the more Mother, parroting my words, railed at the whitewashed ceiling, the calmer I became. Our side had won and somewhere above, there was consternation, because the Heavenly Judge had no proper answer.

Shortly thereafter, a man showed up at the door, blind in one eye and with a halting walk. He carried a small casket, tied with a strap. He moved sideways, as though stealing in. Mother gave a start. The man stood helplessly by, appealing—man to man, as it were—to my father, who, wailing, brought him into the house.

I begged my companion’s pardon for having wandered off in a trance for so long. “My mother is very sick,” I told him, as the thought suddenly struck me: Who knows? She may no longer be alive. The fields rushing by looked parched from the burning sun. An old dog barked at the train. A small, sad-faced boy waved his hat. A thick patch of woods caught a glint of the sun, shattering the light into a thousand pieces and gilding the trees.

My companion perked up when I told him that at some point I was planning to visit the Soviet Union. “The Soviet Union?” he exclaimed, giving me a dark look. He removed his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, and stared at me intently. “What regards,” I asked, “in the name of an intelligent, young Pole, shall I convey to the Soviet Union?”

He continued wiping his glasses. He spoke in measured words, but with oratorical fervor: “In the name of a substantial part of the Polish youth, tell them that we follow all that is happening in the Soviet Union with great curiosity. More than that I cannot say. Just be sure to emphasize that we are exceedingly curious, so curious that they have a moral obligation not to disappoint us. They must take care not to commit errors that would harm us and derail our progress. As a state bordering theirs, we’ll feel the brunt of their mistakes more than the rest of the world, which is far away. We’re right next door, a hand’s breadth away.”

Suddenly, he took out his pocket watch and his face brightened. “You have only a half hour left to go, exactly thirty-two minutes, even less,” he declared, becoming increasingly excited over my imminent arrival home. “After twenty years,” he said, holding out his watch, “it’s now exactly thirty-one minutes to the fateful moment.” He kept looking out the window with growing restlessness, all the while consulting his watch, counting off the minutes. As his excitement mounted, an image took shape in my mind, of the convict in that Chekhov tale, with the wild hair and full-grown beard. Or it may have come from some piece of Chekhov reportage, or even a legend told about Chekhov. It seemed as if we were reenacting the prisoner’s story—me with my flushed face pressed against the cold window and the young Pole staring at his watch.

The convict had just been released after ten years in Siberia and was on his way home to his mother and father. The account of his long, arduous journey, buried deep in a newspaper, so captured Chekhov’s imagination that he couldn’t get it out of his head. He followed the convict’s entire progress from city to city, studying maps and railroad timetables, until he had pinpointed the exact minute when the convict would step off the train and fall on his parents’ necks. On the day that the convict was due to arrive, Chekhov was beside himself with impatient joy. He kept taking out his pocket watch … only four hours left … two hours … one hour … half an hour … minutes. In this way Chekhov lived through the entire drama of the convict’s passage to freedom.

“Sir, you have only two or three minutes left, if that,” my timekeeper announced.

The train’s whistle let out a few sonorous blasts. Coming into view were, first, factory chimneys, then some isolated cottages surrounded by foliage. It was almost evening and the trim, modest dwellings reflected a sun now spent of its heat. The young Pole stood next to me in the corridor and rested a hand on my shoulder, as if seeking to lighten the gravity of the moment. There were tears in his eyes. The train began to puff more slowly. In unison with the conductor, the young Pole joyously sang out: “Lu-u-blin!”

“Even from the gutter will I sing praises to Thee, my Lord, even from the gutter.” Supper was nearly over. A number of guests had already left the dining room. Those who were lingering on at their tables picked their teeth and nursed their glasses of tea. At one of the tables every seat was still occupied. A man in a skullcap sat at the head of it. The seven or eight other men at that table were silently listening to him, occasionally dipping a spoon into their stewed fruit without looking at it, slowly sucking and rolling the prune pits on their tongues. It was not the food they enjoyed, but the presence of the man in the skullcap. Never for a moment did they take their eyes off him.

“Come here. Give us your opinion.” The man who was speaking caught the arm of the proprietor, who was just going by. The latter was very thin and nervous, and seemed always to be sniffing at something with his long nose. He kept a sharp eye on the room, watching the faces of his guests for the least sign of displeasure. To follow him darting about the dining room was positively dizzying. To all he would repeat as though it were a proverb: “You pay the bill; my job is to satisfy you. That’s only fair.”

“Come here, Mr. Buchlerner, and give us your opinion,” the man in the skullcap repeated. “You have an intelligent-sounding name. My friends here say I can’t have another drink. They maintain I’ll be drunk. Do you know what I say to that?”

The proprietor stood politely by the table, turning his head—or rather his nose—to keep tabs on the other guests in case they might require attention. He did not like to be pinned down, but the man in the skullcap was a guest, and a prominent one at that.

“Do you know what I say to that? I say that even if I did get drunk and fell in the gutter—a respectable man, with beard and skullcap—that even from the gutter I would sing praises unto Thee, my Lord, even from the gutter!”

“That’s very well put, sir,” Buchlerner said, nodding approval. He had just ascertained that everything was all right in the dining room. His nose stopped turning, and he gave his attention to the table. “That’s very well put. A little drink can’t do any harm. My grandfather, may his soul rest in peace, took a drink before his meals, drank with his meals, and after his meals. But you mustn’t think he ever got drunk, God forbid. Not at all—just a bit—tipsy.”

“That settles it. Let’s you and I have a drink!” The man at the head of the table filled a glass and handed it over to the proprietor. Then he filled another for himself, and was about to speak when he saw that the proprietor had already drained his glass.

“Heaven bless you—you don’t drink like a Jew, you drink like your grandfather!”

Buchlerner was embarrassed. He stood there with his empty glass and everyone at the table was laughing.

“No, no—we mustn’t drink like that, without a toast. That’s Esau’s way,” the man in the skullcap said jovially. He took the proprietor’s glass, filled it to the brim, and handed it back to him. Buchlerner stood there helpless, since the slightest move would spill some of the drink. The man in the skullcap spoke: “The trouble with us Jews is that we do not love the Lord of the universe enough.” He raised his glass very high, as if toasting someone above them. “To be sure we fear Him, we tremble with awe on Yom Kippur. But why don’t we love Him every day of the year? We ought to long for Him with every fiber in our bodies, yes, love Him really, with all our hearts.” Now he sniffed at the glass as if it were a snuff box, and took a tiny sip. Buchlerner, too, had raised his glass, higher than if he had been saying the
Havdalah,
but he hesitated to down it.

“All right, so I’m going to get drunk. But even from the gutter I will sing praises unto Thee, my Lord, even from the gutter.”

He straightened his skullcap and began to hum quietly to himself. It was impossible at first to tell the tune, until all of a sudden it emerged, melting in its sweetness. It was a haunting melody, one to carry you away. The others at the table joined in one by one. Buchlerner’s timidity was overcome. He took a sip of his drink and joined in the singing.

The song took hold of them one after the other, until it seemed to possess a momentum of its own. Only now, when they were entranced, heads aslant, eyes half-closed, did the man in the skullcap say, “To your health, my friends, to your health!” And he drained his glass.

As the singing began to die down, and the singers came out of their trance, a young man of twenty-eight or twenty-nine got up from his seat at another table and started over to them, walking with stiff, military bearing. At the same moment, a tall, sturdily built man rose at a neighboring table. He watched the young man, waiting to see what he would do. After a few resolute steps, the young man suddenly stopped, turned around and went back to his table, but did not sit down.

“Mr. Bronski!” the tall man called. But the other pretended not to hear.